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Singing Cave / Dragon Harvest (Mission)
"The group consisting of myself, Avos, Kay, Fidelius, Wivaun and Takrend set out at 8:30 am to search for the source of the strange fey-like music in the South, and scavenge the remains of the white dragon. Around 11:30 we reached the river, and crossed without too much trouble, partially thanks to our resident swimming experts Avos and Wivaun. Soon after we returned to the coast, and passed by an interesting graveyard, apparently the others in the party knew it fairly well (though not Takrend). We continued down the coast from there, and eventually began to faintly hear a mournful sound, the music we were trying to investigate. Having been my first time in this area, imagine my surprise when I actually sort of recognized the music. I couldn’t quite place it at the time, but the closer we got to the source, the more obvious it became. It was a song of mourning, something typically played after a great tragedy has befallen something, or someone, usually in the last moments before, or directly after, a great miracle. A good example would be the death of a newborn babe, minutes after birth. It’s a type of song I’ve heard dozens of times throughout my life, and played but once. A small oddity did cross our paths before we reached the source of the music, however, in the form of an orc corpse. Of course, from what I’ve heard and read, such a sighting isn’t uncommon in the Western Isles. The strange thing was that this corpse had no visible cause of death, and it was floating face down in the ocean, right off the coast. From what Kay said, apparently this is something they have encountered before, and hypothesised it is the result of some sort of psychic attack. Given the body, and my own experience with such types of attacks, I’m inclined to agree with him. Finally, we reached a section of the coastline that held a series of rocky outcroppings, with mouths of caves right on the shoreline. The signing was clearly coming from deep within these caves, so we decided to explore them a bit. Kay used his familiar (I think he said it’s name is Carl?) to scout ahead, and attracted the attention of a dryad-like creature, clearly fey in nature. I was immediately intrigued, as I’ve dedicated a large amount of time studying the fey in my life, but have yet to meet one in person. This dryad, named Ivy, is protecting something deep within the caves, someone called the Maiden. Whether this Maiden is an archfey, or some lesser being I am not sure. After some deliberation with Ivy, and after a clear charm effect she placed on Fidelius, I decided to “persuade” her into leading us to this Maiden through the use of a tiny bit of magic. Of course, once the effect of this spell wore off, she was rightly pissed, and two more dryads stepped out of the walls behind us. Right before it looked like we were going to have to fight, a surprisingly kindly old sea hag wandered up and stopped the angered Dryads from attacking. She introduced herself as the Matron, named Helgi. She’s the one in charge of watching over this Maiden, and refused to let us have an audience with her. Apparently, the Maiden is incredibly old, and has been singing for longer than everyone in our party has been alive, apparently with the exception of the 226 year-old Wivaun. Knowing I couldn’t do anything to charm our way to the Maiden, and not wanting to get into a fight in their turf, we offered our services in exchange for leaving unharmed. Helgi didn’t have a distinct task for us, but instead told us to seek out her cousins, a coven of witches deep within a nearby forest. Apparently they would have something for us, but what that is she couldn’t say. We left the cave to discuss our options, and decided that the possibility of fighting a coven of hags was too great a risk. Both Kay and I are fully aware of their destructive power, and it would be unlikely that anyone of us would survive such an encounter. So we struck out for the dragon corpse, continuing to follow the coast line. After a couple more hours of travel we spotted a ship out in the ocean, about a 10 minute swim for the strong swimmers in our group. We could just make out the figures on the ship, who were very clearly all dragonborn. It didn’t take us long to realize that this was likely the spot where the dragon was slain, and Avos and Wivaun set out to spy on the ship. When they reached it, they were able to see several dragonborn swimming with strange packs on their back, going between the ship and the large corpse of the dragon. They were scavenging the remains of the white dragon, which was rightly ours. When the swimmers came back to the shore, we made a plan to take out the ship, and finish the scavenging of the corpse. Avos and Wivaun swam back out, alerted the dragonborn swimmers, and the ship began to turn into the shore. The second it got within range, Kay destroyed the front of it with a massive explosion. I can safely say I have never seen that type of power before, and it both frightened and amazed me. A follow up blast and several dozen seconds of pea-shooting later, we killed 26 of the 36 dragonborn that were on the ship. We did capture one, but he didn’t speak common so we let him go. Though he did immediately attack Kay, so we killed him as well. I guess that makes 27 of the 36 dead. It wasn’t quite the grand adventure worthy of a mighty song that I was expecting, but I did find a new potential figure of a song in Kay, wreathed in flame and destruction as he is. Afterwards we gathered up what dragon remains, bones and scales, we could for that night, and made camp inland a couple hundred feet with the intention of scavenging more in the morning. Takrend and I took first watch, and it passed without much of an issue although I did have an extremely uneasy feeling throughout most of it. It was during the second watch where things went badly. I was awoken abruptyl by Avos’s scream of pain, as a blackness that not even my darkvision could pierce filled my vision. I did my best to find Avos in the inky darkness, but was eventually hit by an arrow in the shoulder and knocked unconscious. I did, however immediately come to, just to be knocked out right away by some unknown assailant. When I came to for the second time, all 6 of us where suspended in cages in the middle of a large orc camp. Kay, Avos and myself had these strange anti-magic bracelets attached to our arms, and all our equipment had been taken. It wasn’t long before we were lowered down to talk to their commander, an impressive female orc named Zarkhad, who had several bones shoved into her arms. Surprisingly, they did not want to kill us, they simply wanted to know why we were here, and why we attacked the dragon cultists. Apparently those dragonborn are apart of a damn cult, so I feel a lot less bad about slaughtering 27 of them. So we told her why each of us was here on Western Isles, and they praised Fidelius as a dragon slayer. She even gave a couple of us, Fidelius and Kay, orc names for their feats of strength. It’s obvious they respect the strong, regardless of race or ties. We also learned about a strange crystal ship that sometimes passes by this area of the coast, which looks like a tree on its side that rotates in the waves. After explaining our purpose to the commander, she agreed to let us go free as long as we all swore an oath to never take up arms against the Longclaw clan. I saw this as a reasonable deal, seeing as these orcs seemed to be the most amiable group to be encountered in the Isles so far. Prior to the oath being sworn, we shared meat and mead with the orcs, and I got to perform one of the few orcish songs I know, using their surprisingly well-made drums. There’s nothing quite like the beat of a heavy orcish war drum, and I did what I could to learn more from their “musicians” afterwards. The oath itself consisted of each of us taking the tooth of a large cat, and shoving it somewhere into our body. I chose the meat of my right leg, and as such I now have a large tooth shard jutting out of my thigh. It looks pretty badass, to be honest, though it hurt like a bitch. Afterwards we were allowed to leave, and they sent us off with full packs of food and water. It was certainly not how an encounter with a bunch of orcs would go, but I am glad to have met Commander Zarkhad. Her feats alone are worthy of a song. From there, it was a simple walk back up the coast, past the singing caves, across the river and finally back to the Last Chance. It was a hell of a crash course in the Western Isles." ―Wilavor Vande's adventure log